Coral Reef Restoration

Current Projects

Mote is working with NOAA’s Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and the Nature Conservancy to advance culture methods for hard corals at Mote's Elizabeth Moore International Center for Coral Reef Research & Restoration in the Florida Keys. Our research is focused on developing culture or propagation methods for more than 20 species of hard corals under controlled environmental conditions for reef restoration research. Research efforts have produced thousands of coral colonies for transplanting back to the reef.

In 2016, Mote launched a coral restoration project at Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park (Key West) with partners from Florida Park Service and NOAA’s Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, with funding support from the Monroe County Tourist Development Council. The partners planted 5,500 fragments of brain, mountainous star and great star corals during summer 2016 in park waters, and they developed an educational kiosk to help park visitors learn about reefs.

The Combat Wounded Veteran Challenge and SCUBAnauts International join Mote each summer to plant corals in a special restoration area of NOAA’s Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

In September 2016, Mote and The Nature Conservancy launched a coral conservation initiative that will enable coral restoration at unprecedented scales throughout the Caribbean and the Florida Keys. The collaboration officially began with the signing of a one-year memorandum of understanding (MOU), enabling the first steps in a proposed 15-year initiative of joint coral reef restoration and conservation efforts.

Dr. David Vaughan was one of several Mote scientists who joined Saudi Arabian scientists from King Abdulaziz University to launch the most extensive baseline survey to-date of coral reef ecosystems along the Saudi coast of the Gulf of Aqaba during late September 2016. The initial, two-week expedition focused on coral abundance, diversity and stress, along with the abundance and diversity of butterflyfish, sea urchins, seagrasses and other species that may indicate the health of this critical environment.